Epidemics kill thousands of children every year. Here's what you need to know about epidemic diseases and how we help protect vulnerable children around the world.
Preventable infectious diseases remain among the leading causes of death for children under five globally, with epidemics disproportionately affecting those in humanitarian crises and low-income settings. When disease outbreaks strike, children face the highest risks—their developing immune systems, limited access to healthcare, and dependence on adults for protection make them uniquely vulnerable.
Last updated June 2026
Health worker Miraha, 25, vaccinates Iftine, 7 months, at a mobile outreach session in a remote community in Oromia Region, Ethiopia.
What is an epidemic?
An epidemic is the unusual increase in the number of cases of an exisitng or new infectious disease in a certain region or population.
Epidemics can often be the result of other disasters, such as floods or earthquakes. They may also attack animals, causing local economic disasters.
Epidemics require rapid, localized intervention—establishing treatment centres, distributing supplies, training health workers—while pandemics like COVID-19 demand coordinated global responses. Save the Children operates across both scales, maintaining emergency response capacity while strengthening long-term health systems that prevent outbreaks from escalating.
What are different types of epidemics?
- Cholera - an infectious disease that causes severe watery diarrhea, which can lead to dehydration and death if untreated. It is caused by eating food or drinking water contaminated with a bacteria.
- Malaria - is a life-threatening disease. It’s typically transmitted through the bite of an infected mosquito.
- Ebola Virus - a deadly disease that spreads via direct contact with bodily fluids of a person who is sick with the virus.
- HIV/AIDS – a virus that damages the cells in your immune system and weakens your ability to fight everyday infections and disease. AIDS can't be transmitted from one person to another, but the HIV virus can. Here's how you can stop transmission.
- Yellow Fever - a tropical virus that is transmitted by mosquitoes. It affects the liver and kidneys, causing fever and jaundice and can be fatal.
What the Data Says
Children bear the heaviest burden when epidemics strike. In low-income countries, infectious diseases rank high of all child deaths—a rate that spikes dramatically during outbreaks.
Recent epidemic patterns reveal troubling trends:
Cholera: After years of decline, cholera cases surged globally in 2023. Africa experienced a 125% increase in cholera cases and a 62% increase in cholera deaths compared with 2022.
Measles: Measles cases surged worldwide, infecting over 10 million cases globally in 2023—a 20% increase from 2022—with outbreaks concentrated in regions where routine vaccination dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly all measles deaths occur in children under five.
Mpox: The WHO declared mpox a public health emergency in August 2024 after cases spread across Africa, with children and pregnant women facing higher mortality rates than other groups.
These numbers tell only part of the story. Beyond immediate deaths, epidemics disrupt education (schools close during outbreaks), nutrition (caregivers fall ill, markets shut down), and protection (overwhelmed systems can't safeguard vulnerable children). The ripple effects compound existing inequalities.
How do Save the Children respond to Epidemics?
Child health
Provide frontline healthcare as well as re-establishing/setting up primary health care facilities. We will also distribute essential supplies to health facilities, such as gloves, IV fluids, soaps, buckets rehydration treatments, drugs and antibiotics.
Water, sanitation and hygiene
Provide water, sanitation and hygiene to help stop the spread of disease by making sure people are able to keep themselves clean, this could be through the distribution of hygiene kits. We ensure health workers have sufficient protection from exposure. We also raise awareness in communities of how people can protect themselves and prevent further spread.
Child Protection
Make sure unaccompanied, separated and orphaned children are cared for, and help them reunite with their families, as well as supporting children to cope with the distress they’ve experienced.
Health system strengthening
Emergency response saves lives today, but preventing tomorrow's epidemics requires resilient health infrastructure. We work with governments and local partners to train healthcare workers, ensure vaccine cold chains function reliably, and establish disease surveillance systems that catch outbreaks before they spread
Addressing root causes
Epidemics thrive where poverty, conflict and inequality create vulnerability. Our UK programmes tackle child poverty that leaves families unable to afford heating (worsening respiratory infections) or nutritious food (weakening immune systems). Globally, we advocate for policies that prioritize children's health, from pandemic preparedness funding to climate action that addresses the environmental changes driving disease pattern shifts.
Ebola in DRC: An ongoing crisis
On the 15th of May 2026, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) declared its 17th Ebola outbreak - and two days later, the WHO escalated its response to the highest possible level, declaring it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.
This outbreak is now the third largest ever recorded in DRC. According to Save the Children's analysis of Africa CDC data, children aged 14 and under are more than twice as likely to die after contracting the illness than patients aged 15 to 44 - with a case fatality rate of 38.6% among under-15s, compared to 18.1% among older adolescents and adults. In the first month alone, at least 52 children contracted Ebola, with 19 confirmed deaths.
This outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo strain, for which there is currently no approved vaccine. That makes community-level prevention - surveillance, isolation, trusted information, and infection control - the only line of defence in a region where health systems are already severely overstretched.
And this is arriving on top of everything children in DRC were already facing: conflict, displacement, acute malnutrition affecting over four million children under five, and 14 million children facing critical hunger.
"This outbreak is more than a health emergency, it is a wider social crisis with significant consequences for children, caregivers and communities," said Greg Ramm, Save the Children's Country Director in DRC. "Children at the heart of the Ebola crisis need to be at the heart of the response."
Marléne*, a 25-year-old mother, brings her two-month-old daughter, Deborah*, to a health facility for vaccination. While she is there, she talks about the growing fear of Ebola in her community. As a breastfeeding mother, Marléne* is especially worried about how easily Ebola can spread. She fears that if she were to become infected, she could pass the virus to Deborah*. At the clinic, Marléne* has received guidance on preventive measures, including frequent handwashing and maintaining physical distance, which she now tries to follow carefully in her daily life.
Our response
We've been working in DRC since 1994, and we didn't wait for the WHO declaration to start. Right now, our teams are supporting health facilities in Ituri to detect, isolate and manage Ebola cases safely - providing personal protective equipment, establishing temperature screening, training health workers, and running community education in local languages to counter the misinformation that actively drives transmission. We're also protecting children from the wider fallout: family separation, lost schooling, and the psychological toll of seeing people they love fall ill.
In the longer term, our response covers nutrition, child protection, water and sanitation, and continuity of essential healthcare - because Ebola's ripple effects often harm more children than the disease itself.
What history tells us
We've been here before. In 2014, Ebola swept through West Africa at terrifying speed - at its height, five people were being infected every hour in Sierra Leone. More than 30,000 children lost one or both parents. During the DRC's 10th outbreak, which began in 2018 and became the second largest in history, Save the Children's Emergency Health Unit trained more than 1,200 health workers and almost 1,000 community leaders, reaching more than one million people with information.
That experience - those relationships, that trust - is why being present in communities long before a crisis hits matters so much. And it's why we need sustained support to keep that presence going.
Beyond our health response we also provided families with
- Practical help: Many children lost everything to Ebola, including their parents. We were able to help safeguard these children’s futures. We reunited children with extended family members and got children back into school.
- Physical help: Children who had lost parents or older siblings to Ebola had also lost the regular money those family members brought into the home. We provided these children with nutritious food and household items like mattresses and clothing.
- Emotional: Surviving Ebola or losing a family member to the disease was hugely traumatic and was often made worse by being stigmatised by scared neighbours. We helped protect children by providing psychosocial support, in interim care centres and at home and educating communities to reduce the stigma.
Frequently Asked Questions about epidemics
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How do epidemics differ from pandemics?
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Epidemics affect specific regions or populations, while pandemics spread across multiple countries or continents. COVID-19 started as an epidemic in Wuhan, China, before becoming a pandemic. Both require urgent response, but pandemics need globally coordinated action while epidemics often succeed with regional intervention—though without proper containment, epidemics can escalate into pandemics.
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Epidemics affect specific regions or populations, while pandemics spread across multiple countries or continents. COVID-19 started as an epidemic in Wuhan, China, before becoming a pandemic. Both require urgent response, but pandemics need globally coordi
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Cholera, measles, mpox, and diphtheria currently cause significant child mortality during outbreaks. Respiratory infections like pneumonia—which Save the Children has called "the forgotten epidemic"—kill more children annually than any other infectious disease, though they rarely generate headlines. Climate change is expanding the reach of vector-borne diseases like malaria and dengue into new regions where children lack immunity.
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Why do epidemics hit some children harder than others?
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Poverty, conflict, malnutrition, and weak health systems create compounding vulnerabilities. A malnourished child has a weakened immune system. A child in a conflict zone may lack access to vaccines or clean water. A child whose family can't afford healthcare delays treatment until illness becomes severe. These disadvantages cluster—children facing one vulnerability typically face several, multiplying their epidemic risk.
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What happens to children during epidemics beyond the immediate illness?
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Schools close, disrupting education and cutting off meals that many children depend on. Caregivers fall ill or die, leaving children vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Healthcare systems focus on outbreak response, suspending routine services like immunizations and maternal care. Economic shocks push families into poverty. Our analysis during COVID-19 showed these indirect effects often harm more children than the disease itself.
